I imagine the man who tortured people is imagining this world. I imagine that, like me, he’s able to read the moment when the photograph was taken. He can see the house, the family all around, and as he does so, I imagine, a faint shiver runs through him.
Remember who I am, he hears.
Remember where I was, remember what was done to me.
Where I was killed, where I was buried.
The man who tortured people says that his job in the basement of the War Academy was to sit outside the rooms of detainees, rifle in hand, and make sure that no one spoke. The first room he was assigned was number two. In it was Carol Flores, the man in the photograph he’s holding in his hand.
We called him Juanca, but his name was Carol, he says.
The Flores brothers were tortured at the War Academy. As Carol was being interrogated, young Boris heard his screams. In turn, Carol heard Lincoyán’s screams. In turn, Lincoyán heard Boris’s screams.
One day the youngest of the Flores brothers was taken out of the room where he was held and driven away in a truck. Young Boris made the trip on the floor, lying at the feet of his captors, who announced that they were going to kill him. Young Boris imagined a shot in the back of the head or a burst of machine gun fire behind him as he ran through some open field. He thought about his brothers Carol and Lincoyán, heard their screams of pain from the interrogation room again. And maybe he thought about his mother and his niece weeping, which was the last thing he heard before he was arrested. Maybe he thought about his father, or his other brother Fabio, or his girlfriend, because he must have had a girlfriend. But any last thoughts going through his head were interrupted by the sudden braking of the truck.
The doors flew open. He was blindfolded, and couldn’t see as he advanced, but he soon realized that he was back at the Air War Academy. Back in the interrogation room. When they removed the blindfold, he realized that he wasn’t in a field with some conscript’s rifle pointed at the back of his head. They weren’t going to kill him. They had never planned to. The drive he’d returned from was a kind of warning, that’s how he understood it. But before he could reflect more on what he had been through, a man announced that he had to sign a statement and then he would be released. Boris agreed, and hours later, after being given a good beating, as one might imagine, he was dumped in the center of Santiago. Young Boris could hardly fathom what was happening but as soon as he recovered from the shock, he got on a bus and made it to the door of his brother Fabio’s house, collapsing when someone answered his knock.
My son is fourteen. A little while ago he started taking the bus on his own. It’s an ordinary thing now, but I don’t like him to travel at night or to unfamiliar places. He’s respectful of my fears: he’s careful and calls and lets me know where he is, and he hasn’t rebelled yet against my controlling ways. Boris Flores was three years older than my son and he crossed the city by bus, probably at night, hurting and broken after a month of being locked up. I can’t imagine what his mother felt when she saw the men come for him. I can’t even approach what went through her mind when she had to watch him being beaten and taken away. I don’t know how she was able to bear that entire month with no news, searching for him and imagining him. I don’t know how she must have reacted when she heard that he was back, when she saw him walk through the door and she was able to hug that seventeen-year-old body, battered by electric shocks and torture.
When young Boris arrived he was surprised to see his brother Lincoyán back home. In turn, Lincoyán was surprised to see Boris back home. And the two of them together in their turn were surprised when their brother Carol didn’t return.
The man who tortured people says he kept guarding the prisoners. He learned to take them to their torture sessions. He learned to bring them back. He learned to keep watch so that they didn’t talk among themselves; he learned to make them eat and prevent them from sitting down, if that was what was required. He learned well, and after a while, he was selected to be part of the reaction groups, as they were called. He was taken on operations, directing traffic while the others seized and arrested people.
At the same time, in the basement setting of the War Academy, I imagine Carol Flores still locked up in room number two. From within the confines of those four walls, he imagined his brothers at his mother’s house, the place where they had been arrested and where they were surely now wondering what had become of him. An extra bowl of soup was served and grew cold daily on the Floreses’ table. A seat was left empty for him every lunchtime, every dinnertime.
The man who tortured people says that one day he didn’t see Carol Flores in room number two. He hadn’t been taken to the interrogation room and he wasn’t in the bathroom or anywhere else. The prisoners had gradually been leaving the lower levels of the AGA for other detention centers, so the man who tortured people guessed that Carol Flores had also been relocated.
Young Boris smiled happily when his brother Carol showed up at home. In turn, so did Lincoyán. And in their turn, so did their brother Fabio and their parents and Carol’s wife and even his newborn son when they saw Carol back at home.
That day Carol Flores sat down at the table to eat his bowl of soup but he did not smile. He ate slowly as everyone watched. He lifted his spoon to his mouth robotically. Young Boris had a question for him, and Lincoyán shushed him. Young Boris had another question, and then his brother Fabio shushed him. Young Boris kept asking, and then his parents and his sister-in-law shushed him. And thus the third of the Flores brothers said absolutely nothing during dinner. He didn’t talk about his three months in detention, he didn’t talk about what had happened to him there, or how or why he’d been let go. He said hardly a thing when he saw his son for the first time. For a moment, the Floreses wondered whether this man sitting at the table with them was the same person who’d been taken away three months ago.
Carol Flores didn’t look for work. He stayed home, smoking, sitting in an armchair, probably watching television. His wife cared for their newborn son, and watched this strange man who’d been returned to her. She remembered the other man, the one she had married, a restless young man full of energy, a man who had taken part in land grabs, a man who had enthusiastically joined militant factions in the party and at work. An extroverted, loving man, so very different from this silent man in the armchair.
After yet another day of television, cigarettes, and diapers, Carol’s wife looked out the window and saw an alarming sight. In the street, standing by a car, was one of the men who had been there when the Floreses were arrested. Carol’s wife screamed, terrified. She feared the worst. That they would take Carol again, that they would beat him to death. That they would take her, that she would be beaten to death. That her son would be left alone crying in an empty house. But no such thing happened. When he heard her scream, Carol came to the window and in a voice she had never heard before, he said: It’s okay, it’s just El Pelao Lito. Carol Flores went out to meet the man who was waiting for him. From then on, the man became his shadow.
A little while ago I saw a documentary by the French filmmaker Chris Marker. It describes an episode during World War II that I had never heard of: the mass suicides in Okinawa. In 1945, the Allies invaded the island, which was of strategic importance in bringing about the final surrender of Japan. I don’t know all the details of the battle, but what moved me most and what I’d like to tell is the testimony of one old man, a survivor who described his experiences to the camera.
Shigeaki Kinjo was in his twenties when it happened. Kinjo says that when the Allies’ landing was imminent, Japanese soldiers deployed around the island handed out grenades to the guerrilla forces and civilians. Their instructions were clear: never surrender to the enemy. When the Allies arrived, the Japanese of Okinawa were to use the grenades to kill themselves. It didn’t matter whether you were a soldier or a civilian, a man or a woman, a child or an old person, your destiny was to die. Those were the emperor’s orders.
I suppose the
Japanese army knew they would be defeated. Otherwise I can’t explain this drastic decision. When the day came and Allied ships began to be glimpsed from the coasts, the people of Okinawa watched intently, well aware of what they had to do. Perhaps some thought about disobeying the emperor’s orders and turning themselves over to the Allies, but they had been warned that the enemy were cruel devils who would behead them, rape their women, burn down their houses, and crush their bodies with tanks.
When the moment came to commit suicide, the grenades didn’t work. Or at least not for the civilian population, who had never used grenades before. Bewildered, frantic, afraid, the people of Okinawa didn’t know what to do. The enemy was upon them and they had no way to save their families, their wives, their daughters, their elderly parents, no way to grant them the saving grace of death. Kinjo describes how he watched one of his desperate neighbors take up heavy tree branches and beat his wife and children. The man wept as he did so, but he was convinced that it was an act of salvation. The screams of his family did nothing to soften the harsh blows. Each stroke was followed by an even more brutal one. One, two, twenty, thirty blows. Or maybe more, until his wife and children lay dead on the ground.
A dark silence fell over that corner of the island.
All who had witnessed the scene were left stunned and speechless.
For a moment the collective hysteria was stilled by the sight of the bloodied bodies.
Young Kinjo was there, neither man nor child. He stared in fear. Maybe he heard a flock of birds cross the sky. Maybe he heard the sound of the waves in the distance, crashing against some cliff. Or maybe somebody screamed again, reactivating minds and bodies, and then it was the beginning of the end. Without much thought, Kinjo and other desperate Japanese took other big branches from other big trees and with them they began to beat the other wives, the other sisters, the other elders. Kinjo struck his mother on the head. Then he struck his younger siblings. He wept as he did so, or so he said on camera, but he was convinced that it was an act of salvation. His family’s cries did nothing to soften the harsh blows. Each stroke was followed by an even more brutal one. One, two, twenty, thirty. Or maybe more, until his mother and his siblings were dead, bloody and broken, along with the rest of that big island family of Okinawa.
Japanese history tried to erase the episode from its textbooks.
Japanese history tried to erase the episode from its past.
Young Kinjo, who is now an old man, tried to kill himself after he had killed his family, but he couldn’t do it. Now he’s ashamed when he speaks on camera. He says he acted against nature, thinking that he was in the right, that he was doing something heroic by following the emperor’s orders. His actions were as cruel as an enemy’s would have been. And in fact, young Kinjo, who is an old man now, says that without realizing it he turned into his worst enemy.
I think about Carol Flores and the strange closeness he developed with the man who arrested him: El Pelao Lito. I think about the fine line he crossed in order to draw near to his adversary, to invite him into his home, to no longer fear El Pelao Lito when his captor came in search of him.
When young Boris heard about this relationship, he asked his brother Carol about it, but Carol didn’t answer. When Lincoyán heard about it, he asked too. And so did Fabio and their parents, but Carol never answered.
The man who tortured people says that he knew El Pelao Lito well. His real name was Guillermo Bratti, a fellow air force soldier. He came from El Bosque Air Base and also passed through the Air War Academy. Later they crossed paths at Cerrillos Air Base, where they were transferred, and they began to work together in the same antisubversive shock group. Everybody was there: El Chirola, El Lalo, El Fifo, El Yerko, El Lutti, El Patán. Their objective was to break up the Communist Party and that was why El Pelao Lito was selected to work with a party informer. That informer was Carol Flores, alias El Juanca.
Each day, Carol Flores, or El Juanca, began to do what the man who tortured people is doing right now. El Pelao Lito would pick Carol up and drive him to the office to sort through information. Carol Flores, or El Juanca, sat at a table like the one in this parish hall, interpreting statements gathered in the interrogations of detainees. He, too, was confronted with a thousand photographed faces and he, too, had to identify them. This is Arsenio Lea; this is Miguel Ángel Rodríguez Gallardo, El Quila Leo; this is Francisco Manzor; this is Alonso Gahona, I imagine he said. The man who tortured people says that Carol Flores, or El Juanca, became one of them. He carried his own gun and he started to participate in the detentions and interrogations of his former comrades.
Did young Boris know this? Did Lincoyán? Did Fabio?
One day Carol’s father received a visit from his son. Carol asked his father to come outside with him to talk. He didn’t want anyone to overhear them. Then, for the first time, Carol told his father what had happened to him when he was detained. He talked to him about the lower levels at AGA, the interrogations, the torture sessions, young Boris’s screams, his brother Lincoyán’s screams. He told him about the final pact that he had decided to sign with his enemies. He would collaborate with them if they let his brothers go, releasing them from any possibility of detention. And that was what happened. The Floreses were freed from danger in exchange for Carol’s soul. Carol was convinced that this was an act of salvation.
Did young Boris know this? Did Lincoyán? Did Fabio?
For the first time in a long time, Carol’s father recognized the son he once had. In those despairing eyes he recognized his son’s gaze. In those sad words he recognized his son’s voice. Everything that had remained hidden in the man returned from detention now surfaced. At last Carol was back, but only to say a final goodbye and be replaced, once and for all, by the fearsome Juanca.
The photograph that the man who tortured people is looking at is from that exact time, I imagine. Carol’s son is a few months old and he’s in his father’s arms, wearing those little white shoes. Carol is part Carol and part El Juanca in this shot. His smile is strange, uncomfortable, remote. The man who tortured people knows that expression. He recognizes it, because it’s tattooed on his own face.
Remember who I am, he hears from the photograph.
Remember where I was, remember what they did to me.
Carol Flores, or El Juanca, sometimes went to El Pelao Lito’s house for lunch. The two of them sat in armchairs, staring into space, as the children played over their outstretched legs. They ate bean stew, they smoked, they watched television, and they went out again on some covert operation. Each time they returned they seemed thinner, more tired, more broken down, more taciturn, more silent. This happened over and over again until one day they didn’t come back.
Young Boris never saw his brother Carol again. Neither did Lincoyán. Neither did Fabio, or their parents, or his wife, or the children. The Floreses left an empty chair at lunch and dinner. The soup grew cold once and for all.
The man who tortured people never saw Carol Flores or El Juanca again either.
The man who tortured people says that one night he and his fellow agents were brought in for a special operation. They were driven to a detention center, where his superiors were waiting for them in the midst of a cocktail party. There was pisco and pills and everybody drank and ate. When the drinks were finished they called in the “package”—that was the word they used, he said. The package was El Pelao Lito, handcuffed and blindfolded. He made a mistake, they were told, he was a traitor, you don’t play around with information, whose side was he on. The man who tortured people says he didn’t know what was happening, but he gathered that El Pelao Lito had done something bad, had betrayed the group by revealing some secret. That was why they forced him kicking and screaming into the trunk of a car and took him to the Cajón del Maipo. There, in the middle of the mountain night, they let him out and they shot him, just as he had done to so many of his own targets. Just as had been done to José Weibel, to Carlos Contreras Maluje. The man who tortur
ed people says that he had to bind El Pelao Lito’s hands and feet and throw him into the river. The man who tortured people says that he was scared. For a moment it crossed his mind that the same thing could befall him some day. El Pelao Lito was his comrade, he was twenty-five years old. The man who tortured people had never imagined having to witness the death of one of his own at the hands of their group. He had never imagined what a fine line it was that separated his comrades from his enemies.
The man who tortured people says that a little while later he learned that Carol Flores, or El Juanca, had suffered the same fate. His body turned up in the river riddled with seventeen bullet holes, his fingers severed at the first joint, his spinal column snapped, and his genitals exploded.
The Floreses saw the photograph of the body many years after the man who tortured people gave his testimony. In the photograph, the Floreses recognized a son, a brother, a husband. It was him. Carol, not Juanca. He was missing his teeth, his forehead was beaten out of shape, but it was the Carol Flores they had always loved and looked for. Not the enemy, not the informant.
I remember another episode from The Twilight Zone. In it a man could choose a new face whenever he needed to. He was the so-called man of a thousand faces. He kept all of the faces inside, and depending on the context, he used whichever best fit the circumstances. If he had been on Okinawa he would have been a peaceful, happy neighbor until the war and then a savage murderer of his own family. If he had been in Chile in the seventies he would have been a happy municipal employee of La Cisterna or a young peasant from Papudo who dreamed of being a policeman or a sailor, and then a savage agent, willing to torture or turn in his loved ones.
The Twilight Zone Page 6